CAIRO – The Egyptian government is seeking to restore the father's place in the family through the "Role Model Father" initiative, announced by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in mid-June, after recent shocking incidents of violence by fathers against their sons and wives, including murder and physical and sexual abuse.

According to specialists, the government initiative needs to be taken care of providing capabilities that help the father to regain his guiding and leadership role in the family, while continuing to celebrate and honor positive successful models.

Nevine Kabbaj: The Father Role Model Initiative tries to restore the father's role in securing the family entity (the official account of the Ministry of Solidarity)

Minister of Social Solidarity Nevine Kabbaj announced that the initiative seeks to restore the parental role within families to carry out care and protection, especially with the increasing challenges and difficulties facing the family and destabilizing the relations of its members, whether between husband and wife, or between father and children.

25 million Egyptian fathers

Official statistics reveal that there are 25 million Egyptian fathers, according to figures from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (a government agency) last May, as the number of households in Egypt reached 25.8 million, including 17% of households headed by a woman (a woman who is the breadwinner who heads the family for any reason), while the majority of households are headed by a man (83%).

According to a study by the Egyptian Information Service (a government agency affiliated with the presidency), there are at least 12 million women breadwinners in Egypt, who have become responsible for an entire family, regardless of the number of members of this family, and some of them have a husband who does not work.

According to the figures of the last statistical year (2021), 31% of married women were subjected to some form of physical, sexual or psychological violence at the hands of their husbands.

A recent study by the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood (a government agency) documented that 93% of children in Egypt have experienced violence up to the age of 14, 70% of whom are exposed to violence at home, compared to 14% in schools.

Egypt's "Father Role Model" initiative comes to consolidate the role of the father in the family in conjunction with the celebration of positive parenting and "Father's Day" (Shutterstock)

Amal Zaki, advisor to the Minister of Social Solidarity in Egypt, explained that the "Father is a Role Model" initiative comes to consolidate the role of the father in the family, coinciding with the celebration of positive education and "Father's Day", which most Arab countries celebrate on June 21 of each year.

She stressed that the ministry directs its activity to the Egyptian family as a whole, and provides support in all fields through about two million projects to empower its members economically and raise their income.

Re-highlighting positive role models

Dr. Akram Reda, an academic and consultant for family and educational development at Malath Foundation, believes that there are serious events and huge incidents – which have not yet reached the stage of phenomenon – that have ravaged the status of the Egyptian father, with the recurrence of serious crimes alien to the country's traditions.

Reda expressed, in his speech to Al Jazeera Net, his hope that the government initiative will succeed in its endeavors, suggesting working on a short-term axis to restore the status of the father, focusing on re-celebrating him through the media and state institutions, enhancing his position and highlighting models of the ideal positive father, while working in the long term in teaching children in schools clear concepts about their future roles as father and husband or mother and wife.

The Ministry of Solidarity announced its initiative to honor the role model father after limiting the honor to the ideal mother (the ministry's official account on Facebook)

He pointed out that the difficult economic situation affected the status of the father, considering that the performance of responsibilities is an important part of the mechanisms for judging the quality of relations. With a narrow hand, the father is unable to meet the needs of his family, which makes him feel helpless and self-shamed, and leads to a decline in his ability to perform his guiding role in the family, pushing him either to withdraw or turn into a violent person.

The specialized family counselor indicates that he monitors in his work a phenomenon in the problems of newlyweds, which is that the young man marries for experience not for sustainability with a material view of the matter, which resulted in the absence of the concepts of family and fatherhood has, pointing out that there are frequent problems such as: the father's selfishness, and the attempt to monopolize the mother after the arrival of the first son, and the emergence of sharp differences stemming from the husband's assessment of his wife's relationship with him after childbearing compared to his newborn son.

Provide psychological support and encouragement

For her part, the psychological and social consultant, Dr. Rasmia Fahmy, stresses the importance of providing psychological support and encouragement to every father who seeks to meet the needs of his home and family in light of the harsh financial conditions in Egypt, calling on the government initiative to take care of these dimensions.

Fahmy explains, in her interview with Al Jazeera Net, that most of the challenges facing the father and mother in the family have educational dimensions, whether in their upbringing or their attempt to raise their children.

She believes that the motivation of families to achieve children to achieve academic excellence without learning life skills, or self-recognition, expressing and dealing with their feelings, knowing their needs and observing their thoughts, has produced emotionally unstable parents, who rush to reach ideal results and cannot bear painful feelings, and are looking for perfection without deficiency, which affected the whole house of children and wife. "This requires the father to work on himself again, and to receive the necessary awareness to reform the present and build a better future for his family," Fahmy said.

From a ceremony held by the Egyptian Ministry of Solidarity to honor exemplary mothers (the ministry's official Facebook page)

Father's rights

Human rights defender and legal advisor Alaa Abdel Monsef pointed out that the economic rights of the Egyptian father have been affected by the impact of the financial crisis, which has damaged his position within the family, in light of the financial needs of his home that exceed any other needs related to his father, such as care and education.

Abdel Monsef told Al Jazeera Net that the government initiative must take care of economic rights to create the required balance, and support the father's rights to job opportunities to improve his income, because the father's financial financing role has become the most demanded in Egyptian homes than any other role. This is what appears when litigation in family courts.

The human rights defender and legal adviser explained that the fact that some human rights defenders monitor the crimes of parental violence does not mean that they have become a phenomenon, as the involvement of some parents in domestic violence does not mean stigmatizing all parents with violence or allowing any hatred to be exported against them. Consequently, that observation must be taken into account by institutions concerned with family rights, whether children, women or men.